


make me feel (like i'm nothing at all)

by theviolonist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BDSM, M/M, Musical theater AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:25:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's so <i>easy</i>, is the thing - falling into him is like dancing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make me feel (like i'm nothing at all)

**Author's Note:**

> Really sorry if I misrepresented any aspect of the BDSM sexuality, which I know next to nothing about. Enjoy a weird musical theater!au, and yes, it's angst, how did you guess?   
> Title from Lily and the Prick's Down the drain.

"stop it."  
  
the way his neck had stiffened, the red flush like a bloody wave on his throat, a forest fire rising and spreading.  _you're ablaze_ , harry thought, but he didn't say it.  
  
he'll tell you many lies, but here it is: this is where it all started, and harry didn't regret it since, not once.  
  
*  
  
it's not that he doesn't  _care_ , not exactly – but he's seen so many of them come and go, run through the doors with tear-streaked cheeks, knees wobbly, and he thought – so many times – that they were  _weak_ , because that's what they are. he cares. not for them.  
  
"the leg, higher, for god's sake!"  
  
he's used to yelling. he likes it, in a strange, twisted sort of way. all of him is twisted, but they're used to it. they call him angel because he looks like one, with his curls and the smirk that curls on his lips like a snake, creeping, creeping.  
  
he wants to take their bodies and push them to the extreme. that's why he does what he does, because dancing is the safest alternative, the safest way to make everyone hurt and no one blame him. it's [the game](http://theviolonist.livejournal.com/9402.html), he says when one of his dancers twists their ankle or breaks their wrist. that's how it works.  
  
(the beauty of dancing is there, on the line – pushing and pushing and pushing, and you're an old man at thirty and your toes are a bloody mess, but you look like a bird when you're there, under the lights, like it's all effortless, easy easy easy)  
  
he always gets an urge when he sees them for the first time, not people but  _bodies_ , wonderful dolls of flesh ready for him to bend to the point of breaking (but he never breaks them, of [course](http://theviolonist.livejournal.com/9402.html), at least not where everyone sees), to put his hands on them and search all their cracks like a blind man, eyes shut.  
  
this one is no exception.  
  
"louis tomlinson," he says, cheeks red and eyes blue, a mixture of shy and bold, but harry doesn't hear his name until much, much later, when it's already too late.  
  
okay, he says, and he lets his eyes rake over his body, curving and flowing like a dune, because he  _can_.  
  
*  
  
louis is a good dancer. he isn't a  _great_  dancer, but he's got that thing that make casting operatives call him back, the way he slithers and slides and the way it sometimes seems like his bones are made of water.  
  
"what do you think of the newbie, angel?" liam asks him once after rehearsal. liam knows dancers. harry has been pretending for months not to know that liam is sleeping with danielle, one of the chorus girls. it doesn't really matter. everybody sleeps with everybody in this business.  
  
"he's okay," harry says. "great bum."  
  
"right?" liam says apraisingly, and walks off to his long-time partner, niall. harry despises him, but then he despises most of everyone. niall is a critic – the worst kind of fiend. not even clever enough to see that his boyfriend's cheating on him, harry thinks with contempt.  
  
he stays in the street for a few minutes. he lets the buildings reassure him, so high like they're trying to touch the sky, lets the fumes bore holes in his stomach, lets the asphalt stick to his shoes, the city blind him. even this –  _even this_ – intoxicates him, even this is too much, the city immense and overwhelming around him, seizing him like a puppet and forcing him to walk.  
  
"you okay, mate?" says a voice next to him.  
  
of course it's the light-footed dancer whose name harry doesn't remember. john, maybe. or tom. kyle. whatever. harry still hasn't gotten over the novelty of his body, hasn't looked at his face in detail. he has high cheekbones, sharp like a blade, made to hurt.  
  
"see something you like?"  
  
he's smirking. he's confident.  _burn-out,_  harry thinks. he's gonna burn out, unless he finds someone to burn with him. harry pities the guy.  
  
"it's a great musical," he says. he doesn't sound like he wants to leave, and his body is hot, radiating this kind of heat that only comes with the summer, skin moist and musky, smelling of sin.  
  
harry shrugs. he doesn't particularly like it, but the choregraphy is great. his choregraphy is always great, of course – this one just has the  _special something_  that directors dream of.  
  
"go home, kid," he says. he's not old enough to call anyone kid, and the boy looks like he knows it, but he doesn't say anything, only nods and leaves, messenger bag slung over his shoulder. he'll be tomorrow in rehearsal, and the day after that. he's not going to leave, harry gets the feeling. he's not one of those who leave – at least not until he's wreaked his havoc, and harry isn't going to stop him. it's the theater – wreaking havoc is their second nature.  
  
"welcome to the theater, kid," he rasps in the crude manhattan wind, feeling like an old cowboy. he listens to his words fade in the ambient noise and leaves, trying out new dance moves for the blue-eyed boy. no one gives him a second glance.  
  
*  
  
the boy, whose name turns out to be louis, is a bit better than expected, and of course, it's a problem. harry has never been one for professionalism, but he doesn't particularly want to fuck up the musical, and there's something about louis, the way he bends almost obscenely and makes harry see nothing but him, that makes harry want to tie him up and gag him.  
  
it's a bit distracting.  
  
liam comes up to him in a rehearsal and tells him curtly to stop "drooling on the new boy". harry would retort something clever and biting (actually, he does), but it doesn't mean that it isn't true.  
  
harry doesn't do anything about it. it'll happen if it does, and if it doesn't it won't be much of a loss – boys like him are a dime a dozen around here, and if this one caught his fancy it's nothing particularly surprising.  
  
he pictures him with his lips stretched around his water bottle when he wanks sometimes, too hard and too dry, hurting sweetly.  
  
*  
  
sometimes louis is too soft.  
  
once he wears a faded white sweater and with the bangs that fall on his forehead he looks like a child, lips slack and saccharine, jaw sticky with sugar. he smiles like he's twelve and he can't say no, like the only things he can be are generous and trusting.  
  
it doesn't feel right.  
  
(harry remembers that he's nineteen and doesn't panic until he does, feels sick and twisted and perverse because he probably is, heaving dry, rasping in front of the mirror with heavy black eyes and a paper-thin throat. it's not about louis. harry isn't that much older. but he doesn't want to know what it's about, so he blames himself for that, even if it's the easy way out.)  
  
*  
  
at some point, harry learns that louis doesn't have an appartment.  
  
"where do you live?" harry asks, pressing his fingers into the bruise he made to the soft skin of louis's stomach, where he probably  _shouldn't_  hit (the rules come back to him, worn-out from having been repeated too much: no hitting in areas where it could damage internal organs).  
  
louis shrugs, liquid shoulders. "hotels, friends, my parents sometimes?"  
  
(harry has been here (on earth; in this business; in love) enough to know what he doesn't say: and sometimes i let myself be locked up in the studio at night and i dance until the skin of my feet bleeds and there are scars on my back from splinters).  
  
he doesn't ask about the money. louis has money, and harry doesn't know where it comes from, but he isn't sure he really cares.  
  
"don't you miss it?" harry asks. "having a home?"  
  
"no," louis says, his panther eyes hard blue in the darkness, and harry can't tell if he's lying.  
  
*  
  
harry calls zayn one night when it gets too much. they meet at a seedy bar on lexington and fifty-second street, wooden counter and smudges of thumbs on the glasses. zayn is wearing a leather jacket. harry never regrets, and he doesn't regret him. he would have suffocated. they were poison together.  
  
"what are you drinking?"  
  
zayn looks up. he has new tattoos, harry remarks almost absently – dark ink creeping on his chest and throat, something that looks like a rope of maybe rose thorns. it's cheesy, but it suits him. harry thinks about choking him, his knuckles tied hard and white around that throat that he used to love, who said the words he never wants to hear again and the commands that he'll never get tired of, and almost pops a boner right there.  
  
"whisky," zayn says, and he shakes his glass to make the ice cubes clink. he's caught everything, harry can see it on his face, clear as crystal. zayn's always been good at being quiet and watching.  
  
"how have you been?" he asks, mostly because he doesn't know what else to say. he doesn't care if he's allowed, but sometimes he does, and with zayn is one of this times. it's almost funny, that they hurt each other so much, so unashamedly, and now they're shy around each other, of all things.  
  
zayn coughs. it's a rattling sound. he's as beautiful as he ever was, maybe more, darker, a beauty that crushes harry's chest and threatens to reopen the old wounds, salty tongue licking at the walls of his stomach.  
  
"oh, cut the crap," he says, mobile wrists twisting and rotating. harry can't tear his eyes away. "what do you want, love?"  
  
(he never called him harry or angel. it was always love, love, love, love dished out anywhere and always like it didn't mean anything, and maybe it doesn't, here, in a broken bar with two years of silence between them.)  
  
"what do you think i want?" he's almost angry with himself, he realizes with a sort of scientific curiosity, remote and slow.  
  
zayn smirks. "oh, really?" he drawls. harry wonders how his saliva will feel in his dry throat, tainted with whisky.  
  
"really. you still have the stuff, right?" he's trying to be practical, but he's seen it, the  _clinch_  in zayn's body, the switch. he's always been like that, so easy to reel up, one carefully placed word and he's on, ready to go. harry told him to go into dancing so many times, for the way he moves his body when he's in the space, almost floating, heavy golden skin glinting with arousal. zayn always answered it was too private. bullshit, harry said.  
  
"don't worry," he says, voice silky and sweet, "i have all you need." it should sound cocky and presomptuous and even a little ridiculous, but it doesn't. it sounds like a reassurance, an evidence. harry lets himself sink into it, almost guiltily.  
  
"good," he says, shedding his last sliver of control.  
  
"good," zayn says in return, and his fingers close around harry's wrist, searching for his pulse for a second, and then, when he finds it,  _squeezing_.  
  
*  
  
it's so  _easy_ , is the thing – falling into louis is like dancing, one move bleeding into the other until suddenly you've danced for ten hours, arms stretched because you want to fly, muscles aching. harry has trouble taking his eyes off of him, and he hates it – it makes him want to hurt him,  _make him stop_ , for god's sake.  
  
and it was bound to happen, of course – harry doesn't know louis's angle, and he's not stupid enough to think that he wants a  _relationship_  with him, because let's face it, this all is business. harry doesn't really care, only he doesn't see how louis could benefit from this. maybe he's just attracted to harry, who knows. it's all so confused. harry doesn't do confused (he doesn't do confusing, either).  
  
but louis feels  _dangerous_ , smirking with these lips that are begging to bleed, and there is something about him, standing in front of this window with the red sun bashing his head, that's so strangely poetic – harry feels out of his depth.  
  
he knows life well enough, and this is not going to go well.  
  
he dives headfirst.  
  
*  
  
it's a messy sky, grey with technicolor flashes, black peeking at the edges of the clouds. louis is breathing in harry's neck, and they're not touching. harry's body is aching (aching (that's what he likes (aching) aching) aching).  
  
he's whispering, he's a devil, claws sinking deep into the bones of harry's ribcage.  
  
"you wanna hurt me, right?" he says. "i know you want to. come on. it's allowed. touch me."  
  
harry is never afraid – he's always the master of the game – but this game he's not so sure of, and suddenly as he sees this boy twist under his fingers he gets light-headed, vertigo hitting his stomach like a crowbar. he's not in control. this – this is going to slip from his fingers and crash into the wall, he realizes.  
  
"too late," louis says, almost gentle, one hand artfully mussing his hair and the other busy undoing the buttons of harry's shirt. "too late, too late, too late," he singsongs in harry's neck, sucking painful bruises. harry closes his eyes, almost out of habit, to imagine the blood coming up from far under and blooming at the surface, pinpricks of red and dark blue under the hot heat of louis's mouth.  
  
"don't move," he whispers, voice hard, steel.  
  
louis stills and falls limply backwards with a soft giggle. when harry leans above him, he smiles, as if to say,  _see, i've won. resisting was no use._  
  
*  
  
louis likes pain.  
  
he's not ashamed of it – and it's probably why harry saw him first, because you have to like pain to be a dancer, to be an artist, but he has this  _thing_. freedom. he's not ashamed of the ropes and the begging and the handcuffs, not afraid of saying please, not afraid of giving.  
  
it's terrifying.  
  
he lives his life carelessly, bright splashes of color, he's a first draft and he's messy and he's all that harry has always said no to.  
  
he squirms under harry's hands, back broken and limp like a doll and he says things like  _please_  and  _ours_  and  _love_. it's too much (too much too much too much) so harry says  _shut up_  and screws cigarette embers into his ribs, one two three searing red turning black blue yellow. louis says  _thank you_.  
  
and everytime harry tries leaving he doesn't, because louis says something, does something, and it's so  _obvious_  that he's going to stay. niall laughs at him with the corners of his mouth upturned, laughs when harry hisses like a cat.  
  
"you're screwed, mate," he says, laughing brashly and gulping his beer, yellow and red.  
  
"not your mate," harry growls, and niall looks at him, one eyebrow raised, like  _you're missing the point_.  
  
(harry doesn't think about how he turns animal when they talk about louis, or how he's screwed, whipped, done for).  
  
*  
  
(there are days when harry feels forgetful and full of grace. he walks near the river and smokes, lets the wisps of white lead his way, closes his eyes and follows their path.)  
  
*  
  
harry doesn't think about when louis is going to leave him. they're young, both of them – harry still has  _years_  left in the business, doing and undoing stars at the drop of a hat. he's powerful, more than he could have ever dreamed of. perfect life, he says when he's at the bar with liam, the memory of louis tied up and gagged burned white in his mind.  
  
he says he's tired.  
  
when he comes back at home at night, alcohol musky and hot in his veins, his head full of demons, and he pushes louis down, down, down, pushes his cock between louis's teeth until he can't breathe and his eyes are red with tears, he doesn't think about when louis is going to leave him.  
  
harry will never let him.


End file.
